Revenge of Gaia

Vithal C Nadkarni, TNNOct 28, 2005, 01.57AM IST

MUMBAI: Some environmentalists are describing the torrential floods in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu as the Revenge of Gaia, the Earth Goddess, in retaliation to humanity's collective abuse of the environment over the centuries.

"In 1991, we predicted extremely abnormal weather for the new century: melting of the Himalayan glaciers; earthquakes in north India; excessive rains in the south, along with flooding and tidal damage of our coastal areas, but no one paid heed," he says.

A decade ago, climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions was just a conjecture. Now, experts say the future is unfolding before our eyes. Canada's Inuit see climate change in disappearing Arctic ice and permafrost, shantytowners of Latin America and Southern Asia experience it in deadly storms and floods, while Europeans see it in disappearing glaciers, forest fires and unprecedented heat waves.

Scientists studying tree rings, ancient coral and air trapped in ice cores report that the world has never been as warm in the last thousand years. Experts at the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism say the three warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980. The Earth has probably never warmed as fast as in the past 30 years, a period when natural influences on global temperatures, such as solar cycles and volcanoes should have cooled us down.

Climatologists reporting for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conclude that we are seeing the after-effects of global warming caused by human activities. India, China and Nepal could experience floods followed by droughts in coming decades, warns Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Wildlife Forum's Global Climate Change Programme.

A study commissioned for the WWF indicated that the temperature of the Earth could rise by two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in a little over 20 years. Allowing global temperatures to rise that far would be "truly dangerous", Ms Morgan says.

"The rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers will first increase the volume of water in rivers, causing widespread flooding. But in a few decades this situation will change and the water level in rivers will decline, meaning massive economic and environmental problems for people in western China, Nepal and northern India," she adds.

Other experts say that sea level is rising due to the thermal expansion of the oceans, combined with melting ice on lands. In this century, human activity could trigger an irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet. This would mean a six-metre rise in seal level, enough to drown billions of people.